fourth date

The plan for our scheduled April date was to get The Book of Questions, go out to dinner, and ask each other questions from the book. Here are a few sample questions:

-- For a person you loved deeply, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing there would be little chance of seeing your friends or family again? (Marc yes, Michelle no)

-- Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits? Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted? (Michelle yes, Marc no)

-- If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterward would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? (Marc yes, Michelle no)

-- Which sex has it easier in our culture? Have you ever wished you were of the opposite sex? (We both said that men have it easier. We also both said we have never wished we were the opposite sex.)

We didn't even bother with some of the questions, because we already knew what the other's answer would be. But there were a lot that were thought-provoking and started interesting conversations.

We went back to Pizzeria 712 to try some things on the menu that we didn't get last time. We had an appetizer that was a beef short rib on top of polenta with a horseradish sauce. It was so good it rendered me speechless. We got a caramelized onion/potato pizza that was amazing. And we had this for dessert:

A horrible picture, but a delicious brownie sundae. They use Amano chocolate, which Marc recently discovered online. It is manufactured right here in Orem, and has won prizes for best chocolate bar at several chocolate shows since its inception. Sadly, we haven't anywhere to buy it locally yet, so we may have to break down and order it online. The dessert was fabulous!

I meant to take a self-portrait of us reading the book, but somehow I forgot! Oops.

third date

Remember when I told you about Chow Hounds? Marc was searching their site for something really good to eat in this, the land of chain restaurants. I was holding out little hope that he'd find something that we didn't already know about, but he did!

Two former Sundance chefs opened Pizzeria 712 a couple of months ago. That's all we needed to know -- we scrapped our March date of take-out and a DVD and went to check it out on Friday. It definitely did not disappoint! And as an added bonus, we saw a couple there that lives across the street with us and we ended up eating dinner together. (They're regulars there -- he used to be over the food at Sundance, so he knows the chefs and knew all about their opening.)

We wanted to try everything on the menu. But since we had to narrow it down, I had a salad with beets and Marc had one with roasted squash. Then we ordered two pizzas to share between all of us -- gorgonzola pine nut, and fennel/Italian sausage, Both delicious. We shared a pear cobbler for dessert.

Since we had gotten there fairly late, we were there until closing time and were actually the last customers in the restaurant, so we were talking with the chefs. I got out my camera for a group self-portrait (you know I had to) and one of the chefs said, "No flash photography, please - unless you're going to put it on your blog!" So of course I obliged:



Of course no one wanted to do the self-portrait, but I can be very persistent!

(Don't ask me how Marc ended up being the only one to look at the lens...)

Good food, good company -- our March date was a success!

Creative Friday & second date

Creative Friday always seems to come around right when I need it. This time, it was so great to show Jill my newly organized studio, and to have her be as excited about it as I was! (She's one of very few people who know just how bad it was before, so she can really appreciate the dramatic turnaround.) Then we settled in to our usual chatting, eating, and correspondence.

As Jill was shaking some pebble ice into her mouth, she commented that the cup covered her whole face. I hadn't ever noticed, but then when she pointed it out... it was pretty funny.

She wasn't too keen on being dropped off and picked up by Randy, a.k.a. The Groove Buster.
Luckily, she has her car back now!

Last night, Marc and I went on our February date -- yes, again on the last day of the month! I really tried to do it earlier this time, but for various reasons it didn't work out. Our February date was supposed to be re-creating one of our earliest dates, but Marc really wanted to go to The Melting Pot, so he used his veto power for this one.

We had both heard about this restaurant from friends, but this was our first time there. Our waiter asked us if we were celebrating a special occasion, and we just smiled and said no. (although it was pretty expensive!)

Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took in the restaurant didn't turn out at all. Marc was a good sport about the public self-portrait, however. In fact, he said that next time we'll have to mix it up a little, come up with a different kind of self-portrait. Aha! He's starting to come around...

The food was really good, better than I expected. I thought that a fondue restaurant (in America, anyway) sounded kind of gimmicky - I didn't think it would be anything unusual. But like I said, it exceeded my expectations. Our cheese fondue was a blend of 3 cheeses, including blue, and we had bread, apples, and vegetables to dip. We both loved it.

We chose the oil for the main course, and they brought us filet mignon, pork, chicken, shrimp, and ravioli to dip, with many sauces on the side. (Our favorite was the filet mignon with gorgonzola sauce.) Again, yum. One tiny problem, however: a fondue mishap! A fondue injury, if you will. I burned the inside of my lip. I'm still not really sure how I managed to do that, but now I have a big blister. It was unfortunate, as it diminished my ability to fully enjoy the dessert course, which was fabulous:

For the chocolate fondue, we chose dark chocolate with a swirl of chunky peanut butter. Surprisingly, the cheesecake was our least favorite dipper -- the fruit was wonderful, and I especially enjoyed the two kinds of marshmallows.

But I would have to say the best part of the date was the 4 hours of uninterrupted conversation. You don't get that while going to a movie, and it definitely never happens at home!

Today was not nearly as great as yesterday, which is to be expected. But this was a highlight: Lucas and Landon playing the American Idol game. They were cracking me up. Unfortunately, Landon got wise to my efforts at recording them on "film":

first date and update

First, an update on the computer problem. Marc solved it. Would you like to know how stupid it was? It turns out that when I went to crop my banner photo in Photoshop, it automatically filled in my banner dimensions (how does it know?) -- which I noticed, appreciatively. What I failed to notice was that it was set to inches instead of pixels. So when it tried to upsample my photo to 800 inches wide... it sucked up all the remaining memory on the computer. Riiiiight. I don't know if I ever would have figured that out. All is well now.

Next, a general update on the last couple of days, since I've been AWOL here.

Eva's new favorite past-time is playing in the sink. Bubbles, no bubbles, a bowl to wash, or just some rubber duckies. It's all good. I started making her wear the apron because she was getting so soaked every time.

Good mail from Patsy! Fun valentine stuff, including Dove chocolates (who can resist them?). My kids were SO curious about the flavored straws and had to try them.

We went to Petco to buy dog food. How could I have forgotten how much fun it is for kids to go to the pet store? We saw bunnies, mice, birds, snakes, fish, lizards, frogs, and guinea pigs. The funniest part was when we were looking at the fish and Eva said, "Look, Mom! It's a Convict Tang!" (It wasn't really, but did bear a striking resemblance to the Convict Tang in one of her books.)

She picked out the treats for Jack and insisted on holding them until we got home. (This is our unshoveled driveway.) She was terribly disappointed that I wouldn't let her give all of the treats to Jack upon our return.

Good mail from Lara! I had been wanting to read this book, based on Lara's recommendation. Just the day before, I went to Borders and looked for it, but they appeared to be sold out. I was so excited when it arrived in the mail the next day!

Yesterday was Creative Friday, but Jill hadn't planned on coming, since Lucas had been sick on Thursday. (If anyone has any good ideas about what would cause a child to have vomiting episodes every 4-5 days with a quick recovery time, please let me know!) Lucas was completely better, and I really needed for Creative Friday to be on, so I convinced her to come after all.
I worked on my book club circle journal, and Jill spent most of her time cutting out good mail labels for her Etsy orders.

now that's a lot of trimming...

Eva's just now getting excited about the dress-ups she got for Christmas. Whitney helped her to come up with some winning combinations.

Also, Max, Lucas and I all got haircuts. Oh how I love fresh haircuts! (I forgot to take a photo of my new look, maybe tomorrow.)

And finally, an update on the 12 Dates of Christmas. I got a little casual about my date responsibilities and didn't do very well in the advance planning department. I suddenly realized (after the Sundance Film Festival was over) that there were only a few more days in January! That left me cramming our first date in on the last day of the month, like some forgetful home teacher. Marc was wondering if I was going to drop the ball -- I won't let that happen again.

It was a pretty basic date, we went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. {An aside: our favorite pizza, Pear Gorgonzola, has been discontinued! So disappointing. We got Mango Tandoori Chicken and California Club. Both good, but Pear Gorgonzola, we miss you...} We were supposed to discuss our hopes for 2008, but we never really got around to that (in my defense, we did feel a bit rushed out of there by our server). We did, however, have a really nice conversation, completely uninterrupted by children. Since most of our dates tend to involve going to movies, and thus little conversation, I counted it as a definite success. After dinner, we started to go to Cold Stone for dessert, but on our way in, we decided it was sheer craziness to eat ice cream when it was so very freezing outside. We couldn't think of anywhere else to get dessert, so we came home and I made our favorite peanut butter brownies. Then we ate them and watched the Lost season premiere. Yep, it was a pretty good date.

{Oh! I did take our inaugural date self-portrait, the first of many, much to Marc's chagrin. I think I'd be in trouble if I posted it here, though.}